Can Cloud Computing drive the economic growth ?

Yes, according to an annual study commissioned by Savvis Inc., a global leader in cloud infrastructure and hosted IT solutions for enterprises. 68 percent of IT and businesses decision makers feel that the flexibility of cloud computing could help organisations recover from the current global economic slowdown.

Vanson Bourne, an international research firm, surveyed more than 600 IT and business decision makers across the United States, United Kingdom and Singapore, revealing an underlying pressure to do more with less budget (the biggest issue facing organizations, cited by 54 percent of respondents) and demand for lower cost, more flexible IT provisioning.

The study, in its second year, reveals that IT decision makers are confident in cloud computing’s ability to deliver budget savings. Commercial and public sector respondents predict cloud use will decrease IT budgets by an average of 15 percent, with some respondents expecting savings of more than 40 percent.

According to Bryan Doerr, chief technology officer at Savvis, flexibility and pay-as-you-go elasticity are driving many clients toward cloud computing. Doerr also feels that large enterprise clients should work with an IT provider that not only delivers cost savings, but also tightly integrate technologies, applications and infrastructure on a global scale.

A lack of access to IT capacity is clearly identified as a barrier to business progress, with 76 percent of business decision makers reporting they have been prevented from developing or piloting projects due to the cost or constraints within IT. For 55 percent of respondents, this remains an issue.

Global research highlights indicate that:

Confidence in cloud continues to grow 96 percent. IT decision makers are as confident or more confident in cloud computing being enterprise ready now than they were in 2009.

70 percent of IT decision makers are using or plan to be using enterprise-class cloud within two years.

Singapore is leading the shift to cloud, with 76 percent of responding organizations using cloud computing. The U.S. follows with 66 percent, and the U.K. at 57 percent.

The ability to scale resources up and down in order to manage fluctuating business demand was the most cited benefit influencing cloud adoption in the U.S. (30 percent) and Singapore (42 percent). The top factor driving U.K. adoption is lower cost of total ownership (41 percent).

Security concerns remain a key barrier to cloud adoption, with 52 percent of respondents who do not use cloud citing security of sensitive data as a concern. Yet 73 percent of all respondents want cloud providers to fully manage security while allowing configuration change requests from the client.

Seventy-nine percent of IT decision makers see cloud as a straightforward way to integrate with corporate systems.